Automating personalization . . . Can it be done?

In a blog posting, Matt Handal throws out a trial balloon. Is there a way, he questions, whether he can develop a follow-up program which sends out "personal" emails on a seemingly random but pre-planned schedule.

I won't try to suggest whether his idea can work but it raises a question experienced by most marketers. How can we effectively and practically connect with former clients and previous/current prospects without spending countless hours trying to come up with individualized communications?

Undoubtedly, "follow up" is one of the construction industry marketing and sales mantras.

Initial inquiries, I've been told several times (though I admit never checking deeply the original source of this information), require upwards of nine to 13 "impressions" before they connect. Similarly, the argument is made that if you give up after one, two or three sales calls, you lose because the potential client would probably respond on the fourth.

Perhaps the reason that follow up at this level is successful is that it occurs when there is an exceptional (and rare) reason for such energy and commitment. My sense is that if you persevere and try a fourth or fifth or more time, you have a really good reason for this extra level of effort; or you are a strange person I would rather be nowhere near.

As an example, I certainly kept in touch as a genuine friend with a woman I dated three times who said "Let's be friends", the classic brush-off. But I wanted to be her friend. (We married 13 years after our original meeting and have been together for 16 years now.) Beyond this perseverance being exceptional in the extreme, I hope to only do that sort of thing once in my lifetime.

In other words, exceptional personal connecting and communicating requires exceptional circumstances to justify it -- and if you are an introvert, like me, you aren't going to feel that comfortable going out of your way to push yourself to maintain these links.

However, undoubtedly, follow up and communication is important. But does it need to be personalized and one-on-one? I don't think so.

I would advocate these approaches could make sense:

• If you can write (or wish to pay someone who can), newsletters, blogs, and published articles (forwarded to relevant people on your list) make a lot of sense, if the content is not overtly self-promotional and focuses on information of real use and relevance to your readers;

• Speeches and presentations help you reconnect with previous clients as well as new ones;

• Community involvement and contributions create non-business opportunities for maintaining and developing relationships.

Of course, follow up with personal calls and emails when appropriate and when it is natural.

But I'm not sure I would go to the extent of faking personalization.

Remembering the basics

Yesterday evening, after a string of setbacks and key employee resignations (yes, these things happen), I thought of my responses and strategies.

For a while, I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to just put everything on hold for a year." Then I figured how I could finance this appealing diversion, and began imagining how I would live and spend the borrowed money to reset my emotional clock and priorities.

My wife (thankfully I am married to someone who is rational and wise, as well as beautiful) quickly put me into my place. She reminded me forcefully and effectively that debt rarely solves problems long-term, and if I want to take the break, I will have to deplete my savings. I can do this, of course, but should I?

These choices reflect the difficult decisions many people encounter; in exchange for short term or immediate gratification, they pull out their credit card or refinance their home and for a while live the good life. Then everything crumbles and the debt, if it is a problem originally, just gets worse.

Fortunately, I've followed my own advice to date in this blog, separating business debt from personal obligations (which are minimal) and this has given me a degree of security that people living on the financial edge don't enjoy.

But I admit that, for a while yesterday evening, I was tempted to break my own rules. Not everyone has the will or ability to defer gratification, of course.

Then, what is the right way for me to "find my break", if I want to take it?

These answers from common-sense business models apply:

• I can reduce my expenses and fixed costs, including, if necessary, my salary, to balance the reduced income if I am not actively engaged in day-to-day work. This may mean giving up some of the treats and pleasures of life, and being frugal about my personal budget.

• I can drain my savings. Hardly wise, but if I really need the break, I can take the money from retirement funds and feel the emotional pain of every dollar I withdraw. This will keep me firmly focused on restoring financial equilibrium and avoid the false feeling that "everything is normal" when debt is increased to maintain comfort or purchase pleasurable things.
  

• I can improve the business income from current activities. Obviously a good idea, and one of the best ways to do this is to find and encourage people to buy more of what we have to sell.

• I can develop new streams of income. Probably the most satisfying answer, because the additional revenue provides more security and of course allows more freedom. How? Some ideas are forming at the back of my mind (which of course require little if no financial investment).

As I thought about these options, I regained my spirit, composure, and hope for the future. Sure, I can take a break. But why not instead think about creating some new breakthroughs?

Changing course: When to pull the plug on a construction marketing initiative or business

Today, we are preparing to change course on a significant construction industry marketing project that has consumed close to $10,000, many hours of effort, and many assumptions.

Just two weeks ago, I thought we were on track. In fact, it looked much more likely that other projects and initiatives would fail while this one would proceed with incredible vitality. But, as we approach our bi-annual planning meeting and review on Monday, I knew something had gone really wrong with the original idea, which could not be corrected by pouring more resources into the existing model.

I decided to pull the plug. (I'll wait a little while before telling readers who cannot guess which plug I'm pulling.)

These developments raise some important questions. With your business plan in place, your budgets set, and your commitments made, when do you stop calling, prospecting, trying, selling, even running the business?

The questioning process itself is the key to decision-making here. You need to ask yourself several questions, and assess your observations in a thought matrix, before making your decisions.

Here are some questions and answers that shaped my most recent decision and could be appropriate in your situation, especially if you are determining your course of action during the recession.

Is the initiative following the budget and expectations of your plan?
Obviously, you have reason to smile if things are working out better than you had planned. But if your expenses are running much higher and/or revenue much lower, then you know something isn't quite right.

Are you missing or likely to miss key benchmark deadlines where measurable results should be apparent?
Say your projected sales are $10,000 and you only have $2,000 in sales three weeks before deadline, and you know from experience that you should normally receive a certain number of calls and inquiries to reach the goal, but you haven't gotten there yet. Do you continue?

Have you extend your deadlines once; taken remedial actions to bring things back on track,but are still not achieving results?
In other words, have you provided a second chance already? You are now entering the world of diminishing returns. Sure, the project may be saved by a third chance, but your chances of success have dropped by now from your initial expectations of 75 per cent to perhaps 10 per cent. How much more money will you pour into the initiative?

Do you have the resources to continue?
This is one of the most challenging qualifications for continuing or pulling the plug. The reason is that if your business is thriving elsewhere, your temptation is to continue the effort -- just a little (or lot) more "perseverance" will get you there, you rationalize. I've seen how little projects continue, on and on, by businesses flush with cash. Of course they should have been killed long ago, but the expense and risk seemed so small. Do you remember the heady pre-recession days?

Do you have alternative plans or strategies?
Can you do something else that will retrieve some if not all of the value of your original initiative -- a spin-off concept or idea that actually looks better than the original concept, for example? In other words, do you have a "Plan B"?

Does your failing project underpin other key business activities?
This is a really tough one. Say you have a project under way that isn't working, but it provides key resources and capacities for urgent and important initiatives, or may reflect your underlying business structure. Changes here may seem very risky -- and they can be -- but you still need to recognize the real problems and solve them, fast, or your overall business could be in real and imminent danger.

Do you have legal or contractual obligations?
You may have set your original project in motion with contractual or legal commitments. You need to consider the costs of breaking these commitments before stopping. Your onward costs may be just as great if you stop rather than proceed. (If this is the case, you should at least attempt to renegotiate your agreements or redeploy your resources more effectively within the contractual guidelines.)

In asking and answering these questions, you'll draw on your experience, resources, and often the counsel of your colleagues and employees. The power of Open Book Management cannot be understated here. It helps everyone, including the participants and proponents of the project you may need to cancel, access and participation in real-time and historical facts and figures backing the decision, and removes mystery or doubt from the process.

Test your assumptions

Great marketing is great communicating, and too often we get it wrong. We assume someone thinks something, or feels something, because of our own preconceptions. Or maybe we are right in our assumptions, but the situation is temporary. For example, the person doesn't return your call, or your ad draws disappointing results. Is it because the ad is bad, or the person isn't interested, or is it something else? (Maybe the person you are trying to reach has a personal crisis.)

Of course, knowing when to question the obvious and when to accept it is something of an art rather than a science. You don't want wishful thinking to rule your choices. So you need simple, quick, and inexpensive (and fast) tools to test out your assumptions. The amount of testing and questioning you do (if your initial results are discouraging) depends on the importance of the matter to you.

Say, for example, you wish to reach a key decision-maker and he or she doesn't return your calls or voice-mail messages. At some point, you may decide to give up, or try someone else. But there are arguments for checking a little more deeply -- perhaps calling the person's administrative assistant, or someone else in the company.

And it never hurts on important things to check with your colleagues, your boss, friends, or other clients. They may give you a different perspective to the situation and you may have a much more valuable response.

Getting it

Ford Harding's posting, "Getting it" in Matt Handel's Help Everyone Everyday, is a worthy read for anyone struggling with rainmaking and selling professional AEC services.

Your abilities to persist, to ask, to connect, and to share/give are the keys to success in business development. And if you want to delegate these responsibilities to others, you certainly have to fist understand and feel the pain and joy yourself.

Fortunately, despite the sales and marketing systems out there, I don't think there is a one-size fits all approach to success because much depends on your own values, interests, and focus. If you are a great writer and are socially awkward, your model will be different than if you love sports and can build a Facebook network of 41 real friends (and growing) in less than a week.

Here is the original photo for this post. See Ford Harding's second comment below.

The Construction Marketing Paradox: Easy work or hard effort?

One of the most important paradoxes in sales and marketing is that you are most likely to succeed if you need to put the least amount of effort into the process.

In other words, if your marketing or selling are hard to do and require much thought, time, and physical and mental energy, you will more likely fail than if you can achieve your results almost without trying.

Yet, almost inevitably, unless you are very intelligent about it, when you give up (fail to persevere) because things are too hard, you fail.

I've seen this paradox countless times over the past few years. Here are some examples:

The great feature or the crappy one

Most of our revenue arises from special printed advertising features profiling businesses and organizations. Suppliers are invited to support their client with advertising. The great features almost seem to sell themselves -- we send the notification to potential advertisers, and they call, email, or fax in their order right away.

My sales reps are jubilant, of course. I tell them: Put some extra effort into that feature for anyone who doesn't respond. It will seem like a lot of work, but you'll sell more.

Conversely, some features just don't work. The company isn't well respected by its suppliers, and they are simply not interested. Sometimes out of many calls and much effort we can coax a few sales. But the whole thing is more a waste of time than anything else.

The fast yes or the slow 'no'

Similarly, in setting up the features, some companies who qualify for the service say "yes" quickly (Others who don't qualify also often want the service -- we need to know when to turn these potential clients away to avoid the bad results in the first example above). Others who qualify hem and haw, finding one excuse after another. Sometimes these difficult potential clients are worth pursuing, but I often see the extra effort produces diminishing results.

Who is more responsive?: The inbound referral or repeat business call or the outbound sales call or blind RFP submission.

You know the answer to this one already. When someone calls you (sometimes out of the blue) and asks for your services because they have done business with you before, or been referred, your chances of success -- at your price -- are high; when you have to seek out the business, they are low. This is why things are often frustrating to established businesses with backlogs who have been relying on repeat and referral business and now have to begin marketing and selling their services. What had been easy becomes hard, and expensive.

So you may be tempted to give up. And that leads to the second part of the paradox: If you don't try hard enough -- if you fail to persevere -- you will often fail as well. This is because, if you trace the roots of your success, you can see seemingly easy business links to genuine perseverance in difficult conditions.

As an example, one of our major ongoing contracts originated during the height of the early 1990s recession. It was an easy call -- the organization representative phoned me -- but only occurred because I had remained in business through some really hard times, doing really sloggy work and selling, just to scrape by. If I had closed my doors before the easy call had arrived, I would never have received it.

Is there a solution to the paradox? Yes, and the answer can be summed up in this phrase:

"Do what you love doing, and do it really well."

The idea is to create circumstances where what would be hard and risky work to others actually is both easy and enjoyable for you. You simply need to align your personal interests and passions with your market's and then you will find it easy to attain great results.

This blog is a great example: I enjoy journalism and writing (and although I can use some excellent editing from people around me, including my wife) I am reasonably good at the writing craft. This passion led me into the publishing business and allowed me to keep going, even when things got really tough, when I needed to roll up my sleeves and write even more intensively and competently. In hard times, people have called and done business with me because of this ability and passion.

If things are getting difficult for you, take a few minutes to think about the activities, experiences and hobbies or vocations you really enjoy. You should build your business and marketing around these interests.

Your challenge is to then find ways to connect your passions with your potential clients. This is why I like association-based marketing so much because in any sizable group, at least some members will share your interests, and you can participate in (or even better, start) a committee or sub-group to express them.

If you follow this simple suggestion, your hard effort will actually become easy -- and you will have learned the answer to the Construction Marketing Paradox.

Perseverance power

Don't give up -- if you are doing something you really enjoy (and are really good at doing). In that situation, perseverance isn't that hard, and you'll achieve your dreams and goals.

Your best marketing efforts will connect your talents and the things you enjoy with your potential clients. This combination is bound to succeed, over time, because you'll be able to persevere, through easy and challenging situations, as you learn what you need to do to achieve your dreams.

Here is an example from (very) personal experience.

On returning from Africa in 1980, at age 27, I wanted to find the woman of my dreams, settle down, and raise a family. My overseas experience opened the doors to a writing job with the federal government in Ottawa, but didn't solve my real deficiencies in social and personal communications skills.

I'm Jewish, and knew that I wanted to meet a woman of the same faith. So I took my one real skill/talent -- and something I really enjoy doing -- and volunteered to do some writing for the local Jewish newspaper. As I wrote one of my articles, I met a woman who represented a woman's organization. Attractive, yes. We dated, three times. "Let's be friends," she said after the third date.

So we became friends . . . and continued to be friends, year after year.

More than a decade later, in 1991, as my new publishing business went through its first real crisis during the early 1990s recession, I recalled some Brian Tracy tapes about affirmations, "positive self talk" and (most importantly) self responsibility. One day, as all seemed to be lost, I had an insight. "My health is still good, I cannot blame anyone else for my difficulties, and I will do what I can to make things right while accepting total responsibility for my circumstances," I said (out loud) to myself. Then, as I transformed my business, I transformed my outlook on relationships.

A few months later, Vivian suggested that we could go out on a more serious level. Two years later we married. We are still together now, preparing for our 15th anniversary, with Eric at 11 (he has none of my social deficiencies!)

You should never underrate the importance of intelligent perseverance in your business and marketing efforts. The saddest thing you can see is someone with real talent who starts out well, and just quits -- or jumps to something else hoping for a better answer. Usually it doesn't happen. "Intelligent" is an important word -- you should either persevere at the things you do best (for income) and/or which align with your values and dreams. If there are things you enjoy but which you are not great at, carry on -- just do it on your own time, as a volunteer or hobby.

Note in a marketing sense, do not confuse perseverance with becoming an irritating (selling) pest. Some of the saddest situations occur when someone who has played the old 80s sales tapes too often continues calling, again and again, in the hopes of winning business without building a relationship or demonstrating a real meaningful value. You need to respect and understand the needs of the person or organization with whom you wish to work -- and that includes the value of their time and your relevance to them.

In the current economy, you may need some real perseverance and patience -- but you will succeed ultimately if you are really talented at what you do. In the short term, connect that talent to your marketing initiatives; and use it to create/develop your business relationships. (And you can see here how these principals also work really well on a personal level.)